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If anyone at InterCom Financial Advisers would have [#permalink]
05 Jan 2005, 07:34

00:00

A

B

C

D

E

Difficulty:

(N/A)

Question Stats:

0%(00:00) correct
100%(00:05) wrong based on 2 sessions

If anyone at InterCom Financial Advisers would have anticipated, or even suspected, the impending sale of the Koniko kelp processing plant, they would have advised owners of Koniko stock to unload all shares immediately.

(A) If anyone at InterCom Financial Advisers would have anticipated
(B) Had anyone at InterCom Financial Advisers anticipated
(C) If any people at InterCom Financial Advisers would have anticipated
(D) If any people at InterCom Financial Advisers had anticipated
(E) If anybody at InterCom Financial Advisers anticipated

Tricky one. What does "they" in "they would have advised owners of Koniko stock to unload all shares immediately" refer to? The company "InterCom Financial Advisers" or the people / individual who would have had the insider information?

If anyone at InterCom Financial Advisers would have anticipated, or even suspected, the impending sale of the Koniko kelp processing plant, they would have advised owners of Koniko stock to unload all shares immediately.

(A) If anyone at InterCom Financial Advisers would have anticipated(B) Had anyone at InterCom Financial Advisers anticipated(C) If any people at InterCom Financial Advisers would have anticipated(D) If any people at InterCom Financial Advisers had anticipated(E) If anybody at InterCom Financial Advisers anticipated

I choose D. Very tricky like others said - what does "they" refer to? I think "any people" somehow in GMAT's sense can be plural.

B seems ok with me initially, but the "If...then" structure fits better here. If the question says "....., he or she would have advised....", then B is good.

D sounds awful. Why would we say "had any people"? When speaking of "any", we want to single out ONE person. We should not continue with a plural noun. B is the only option which has the right subjunctive form but does not have the right plural subject for the second part's pronoun to refer to. "they" should have been replaced by "that person" to properly refer to "anyone". This is a very badly written question. _________________

D sounds awful. Why would we say "had any people"? When speaking of "any", we want to single out ONE person. We should not continue with a plural noun. B is the only option which has the right subjunctive form but does not have the right plural subject for the second part's pronoun to refer to. "they" should have been replaced by "that person" to properly refer to "anyone". This is a very badly written question.

Hmmm.. . you are right, I was only worried about fixing the first part to match "they" in the second part. I agree with you that this is a poorly written question. I guess OA is non of the above _________________